Brownstein Group Launches Unstoppable Quotient to Measure What Makes Brands Matter

PHILADELPHIA — October 8, 2026 — In a marketplace where consumers have more choices than ever but fewer brands are breaking through, Brownstein Group today announced its Unstoppable Quotient (UQ), a proprietary brand intelligence framework designed to measure what makes a brand matter – and identify what it needs to do next.

Developed by Brownstein Group in partnership with Inkblot Analytics, the UQ measures brands across three core dimensions – Empathy, Enrichment and Edge – capturing how human a brand feels, how much value it brings to consumers’ lives and how clearly it stands for something. Together, they provide a measurable view of whether a brand has earned lasting relevance with consumers.

“Brands have spent decades measuring awareness, consideration and preference, but those metrics often tell you where you stand without telling you why or what to do about it,” said Erin Allsman, President of Brownstein Group. “The UQ gets underneath traditional brand health metrics to understand the human qualities that make people actually want a brand in their lives. It shows marketers what they’ve earned with consumers, where the gaps are and where they have the greatest opportunity to become unstoppable.”

The UQ arrives amid an increasingly crowded fight for consumer attention. Brownstein Group and Inkblot’s national research found that 59% of consumers believe there are more brand options than just a few years ago, while nearly three in four could recall two or fewer new brands that had truly stuck with them in the past three months. As consumers narrow their consideration sets, brands face greater pressure to earn meaningful, lasting relevance.

“The challenge today isn’t simply getting seen. It’s earning a place on consumers’ mental shortlists – where competition is fiercer than ever,” said Angus McCoubrey, Chief Strategy Officer at Brownstein’s advertising agency Born and Raised. “The brands that break through feel real, add meaningful value to people’s lives and have a recognizable point of view. UQ turns those qualities into something marketers can measure and act on – moving the conversation from ‘How are we performing?’ to ‘What will make us matter more?’”

Measuring an Unstoppable Brand

The UQ evaluates brands across three dimensions and six underlying attributes:

• Empathy (Humanness + Honesty): How relatable, authentic and trustworthy a brand feels.
• Enrichment (Utility + Delight): How well a brand delivers practical value and rewarding experiences.
• Edge (Boldness + Perspective): How distinctly and confidently a brand expresses its point of view.

Together, these dimensions produce a UQ score ranging from 0 to 100, identifying where a brand is strongest, where it is underdelivering and where it has the greatest opportunity to build relevance. UQ is designed to be an indicator of in-market business performance, not simply a measure of brand perception. Brownstein’s research found statistically significant relationships between stronger UQ scores and consumer behaviors that can drive real-world business outcomes, helping marketers connect the qualities consumers value in a brand to its potential for growth.

Brownstein plans to use the UQ as both an ongoing research platform and a strategic tool for brands seeking to strengthen their relationships with consumers. Beyond providing a benchmark, the framework translates a brand’s UQ profile into actionable recommendations across positioning, storytelling, experience and communications – providing a roadmap for what comes next.

Putting UQ to Work: Philadelphia’s Most Unstoppable Brands

To demonstrate the UQ in action, Brownstein Group applied the framework to its hometown, examining brands with deep roots across the Philadelphia region spanning food, fashion, retail, financial services and more, all using the same scorecard.

The inaugural Philadelphia UQ Top 20 named fashion rental brand Nuuly as the region’s most unstoppable brand, followed by Wawa, Free People, Lincoln Financial and Mitchell & Ness. Vanguard, Philly Pretzel Factory, Victory Brewing, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters rounded out the top 10.

Nuuly led the ranking with particularly strong marks for Delight (94), alongside scores of 90 for Empathy and Enrichment, and 89 for Edge. But the analysis also surfaced an opportunity: despite its performance, Nuuly registered just 27% awareness in its own backyard, demonstrating how UQ can reveal actionable opportunities beyond where a brand lands on the leaderboard.

The full Philadelphia UQ Top 20 and additional findings are available here.